... which would be beyond the ability of the Scottish inquiry to summon witnesses, compel evidence, etcetera.’ According to John Ashton's book, both men are right. The Scottish legal system, and many of its senior members, emerge from Lockerbie with little credit. But, as the canny First Minister also says, the fate of Pan Am Flight 103 on that December evening is caught up in matters of high political import. The feelings of al-Megrahi's family and friends come very low on the agendas of the powerful. Nothing can be done now for the man who died of cancer aged 60. But we can at least read his own words between the detailed researches of Ashton, a ...

... (c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 27) June 1994 Last| Contents| Next Issue 27 Lockerbie, the octopus and the Maltese double cross Peter Smith Political debris continues to fall from the bombing of the Pan-Am flight 103 on 21 December 1988, which killed 270 people. Fallout from Lockerbie has begun reveal one of the ugliest political corruptions of recent times. This Byzantine tale is further evidence of just how powerful and ruthless the American-led international security apparatus-- the 'octopus'-- has become. From the start there have been many awkward and unanswered questions about the Lockerbie affair. Why were the widely-signalled warnings of the possibility of a bomb being placed on a Pan-Am flight ...

... INT), insists the assumed the reader is familiar with the events and the cast of name has no special characters. Those wishing to grasp all the subtleties and significance and serves only to innuendo, will have homework to do. A British journalist identify their publication, recently wrote that, "much of its content is impenetrable." 103 which it very nicely does. 101 Heisalmotrgh,buLOBSTERisalontrgu.Ad example is issue# 11 (April 1986, 55 pp.), which is devoted to According to Ramsay, "Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher," or, "covert operations LOBSTER is a labor of political in British politics 1974-78." Despite the up-front ...

... to assume that Kim had a hand in transforming the UC from a semi-communal (albeit disciplined) impoverished, unpopular 'New Religion' into a political instrument of such sophistication. A couple of examples of joint UC-KCIA operations should be delineated for illustrative purposes. One involved the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation (KCFF), reputedly Pak's brainchild. (103) This organization was formally established in Washington in March 1964, ostensibly to accord honor to Americans who defended and aided Korea, provide for cultural interchanges, and 'foster a mutuality of understanding, respect and friendship between the citizens of the United States and Korea'. (104) But the KCFF had other, covert agendas. Pak ...

... over $64 billion in arms and defense services, with Saudi Arabia receiving at least three-quarters...’ 3 Coles tells us that the Sri Lankan defence budget was some £2 billion a year in 2012 and in the same paragraph that the UK exported 'nearly £1 million-worth' of small arms to Sri Lanka in 2010. (p. 103). £1 million is a drop in Sri Lanka's military budget let alone that of the US.4 Some of the chapters are straightforward and readily intelligible; others are not. As you might expect it is in the Middle East and Libya where things get complicated and I occasionally found the narrative hard to follow (probably because of the ...

... Pincher at a dinner party. Unfortunately for Pincher, the historian Martin Gilbert was present and informed Wilson. Pincher acknowledges that he was the journalist concerned (102) and admits speaking of allegations re Marcia Williams' vetting, Marcia's children and the land deals story (discussed below) but says nothing about the 'KGB cell' story. (103) Pincher also adds, in his account of this, that "he had the documents to prove them" (ie the three claims above). Pencourt report Wilson saying that it was MI5 and MI6 "which were supposed to have 'hard' evidence that the Prime Minister and Lady Falkender (Marcia Williams) along with other Labour ...

... Sikorski, the former Rupert Murdoch man who is now Polish foreign minister. He was one of the few senior Polish figures not to be on the ill-fated plane to Smolensk that crashed in April, killing all aboard. Sikorski's wife, the former Evening Standard and Spectator journalist Anne Applebaum, was booked in 1988 to fly on the Pan Am 103 flight that came down over Lockerbie. 'About a week before the flight, however, I postponed my trip simply in order to stay a day longer with friends in Oxford,' she has written. LFI= Liverpudlian Friends of Israel? Suspicious minds might think there is rather less of a coincidence in the late sorting out of safe ...

... ., an industrial wing, Industrial Research and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and set up in the headquarters of the National Union of Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed three directors: Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the AEU; William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from 1938-47; 103 The Times, April 6, 1957 104 See 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, which lists a number of links between the company and the CIA-controlled anti- Castro milieu of the early 1960s. More accessible see <http://jfkcountercoup. blogspot.co.uk/ ...

... . (p. 36) If we haven't got the point, in an afterword John Wood, chair of the Trilateral Group, restates it: 'The actions of self-consciously bright and overly self- assured statesmen, when combined with gross ignorance, can have fatal effects not just for single individuals but for whole societies and nations.’ (p. 103) This account and the extracts from Hancock's diary do convey considerable sang-froid on the author's part; and at the rear of the book there are reproductions of some of the declassified telegrams which the author sent to London during this period. These may be of interest to students of diplomacy or to those who are studying this period in the ...